


better

by liquidCitrus



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-08
Updated: 2010-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidCitrus/pseuds/liquidCitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignette of the Wayward Vagabond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better

_It was better this way._

He sheds the robes of his old civilization, replacing them with a young child's bedsheet - born anew, he must not retain his old clothing. That was one of the rules, anyway. This is a place where the mutinous and useless are sent, to be disposed of by the harsh elements or else find a way to survive.

The newly reborn wayward vagabond reflects, for a moment. He had led hundreds of thousands of pawns to their deaths. Deaths that could have been avoided easily enough if the new Black Ace hadn't pushed his advantage and went straight to the battlefield to dispose of as many as he could. And "as many as he could" turned out to be the entirety of the villein's - no, the vagabond's - army.

But he isn't supposed to talk about that. That is a rule, too. Not that there's anyone significant to talk to, on this smoldering heap of a former planet. Only a few, scattered other exiles, like him. And not that he wants to talk about it - because the scars are raw, and, after a longer time still, because the scars have already healed. He is afraid to disturb these memories for fear of reawakening them.

He sees some dead human bodies here and there. At first they startle him, reminding him of what's been done and cannot be undone. And then he begins looking around near them. One day he finds a not-yet-totally-decayed convenience store, and though most of the food is overtaken by beetles and moths, it is sustenance. Edible, if barely.

But really, he reflects - stepping through the eternally shifting sands - it was better this way. Better that he live than that he be killed at the hands of the Ace who had disposed of so many of his comrades. Better that he beat himself up for the rest of eternity than that he pass into blissful nothingness as all the other dead pawns do.

Better that he be sent to his slow death on a dead planet than that he be sentenced to a marginally faster death on the lands he loved.


End file.
